How I Avoided 5,292 Hours Of Commuting

What it’s like to work from home for 24 years

“Commute,” by Matt Wiebe

When I decided to become a full-time journalist back in the mid-90s, nobody would hire me.

I applied for staff jobs, but got not a single nibble.

So as a hail-mary pass, I decided to become a freelance magazine writer. It was a genteel way of saying “I’ll employ myself, since nobody else seems to want to.” We do what we must.

Hey, in the long run, it all worked out! I’m still a magazine writer today. It was a very long slog to sustainability (a tale for another time), but the upshot is, I’ve spent 24 years being self-employed.

Which means I’ve spent nearly a quarter century as a work-from-home “remote” person.

My past now looks like a lot of people’s futures. The pandemic has brought on a ton of remote work that shows no signs of going away. In May 2020, fully 69% of all US employees were working remotely at least part of the time, a number that by the fall of 2021 was still 45%. Recent polls show that a good chunk of workers want to stay that way …